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Last German kaiser's heirs fight for riches lost behind Iron Curtain

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Re: Last German kaiser's heirs fight for riches lost behind Iron Curtain

#61
>A century after Germany's monarchy was abolished, some of its blue-blooded descendants are riding back into battle to reclaim what they see as their royal birthright.

How come everybody want to keep it like the kaiser?

(sorry)

What’s missing here and other land claims around the world is that the Kaiser didn’t sue anyone or plead in international court for the right to have those properties.

The monarchs kept those lands through the strength of their armies, and I don’t think that world of might can just transition over to the new world of law

Re: Last German kaiser's heirs fight for riches lost behind Iron Curtain

#62
The British royal family is one of the largest landowners in Europe and, accordingly, receives one of the largest chunks of EU agricultural funding.

I guess the same is true across countries: former royal/noble families hold onto the land of past glory. But should we really accept this? Is a king's claim not simply the land of the state once the country transitions to democracy?

Re: Last German kaiser's heirs fight for riches lost behind Iron Curtain

#64

The British royal family is one of the largest landowners in Europe and, accordingly, receives one of the largest chunks of EU agricultural funding. I guess the same is true across countries: former royal/noble families hold onto the land of past glory. But should we really accept this? Is a king's claim not simply the land of the state once the country transitions to democracy?

> Is a king's claim not simply the land of the state once the country transitions to democracy?

That depends on how the state and personal domains of the monarch are disentangled when the monarchy is disestablished (in the case of the UK the moanrchy hasn't been disestablished, merely almost entirely politically neutralized.)

The former monarch could be left with anything between vast private domains and nothing. But there is no one uniquely correct answer.

Re: Last German kaiser's heirs fight for riches lost behind Iron Curtain

#65
post #24

Post-communist reparations is one big mess in central Europe. I think the case of Lichtenstein is one of the most stark: > Through the prince of Liechtenstein and his family, this country on the Alpine Rhine was still closely linked to the distant Czech lands in the first half of the 20th century, and after 1918 the prince and other family members had an influential role in Czechoslovakia as late-Medieval propertied…

> It is easy to brush these away as long past history, but for example these properties were confiscated from the hands of the current princes father. That I'd think as pretty close connection still.

I'm having a problem coming up with a reason why we should care about the prince of Liechtenstein compared any other random person. Seriously during the period when they lost their lands whole families were totally wiped out. Especially considering they were neutral during WWII.

Re: Last German kaiser's heirs fight for riches lost behind Iron Curtain

#66

Could a German speaker please provide a phonetic spelling of the proper way to pronounce "Hohenzollerns"? Thanks.

Wikipedia lists hoːənˈtsɔlɐn if you can read IPA, though without citation, which may provide a starting point.

Re: Last German kaiser's heirs fight for riches lost behind Iron Curtain

#67
post #8
post #6

> Under a 1994 law, people whose property was expropriated by the Soviet Union have a right to claim compensation -- but only if they did not "lend considerable support" to the Nazi regime. > In a newspaper in 1932, the crown prince called for people to vote for Adolf Hitler in the presidential election, he added. Seems rather straightforward to me.

That doesn't seem quite so straightforward actually. The Nazi regime wasn't a thing yet, as the Nazis had yet to seize power. How obvious was it at the time to Germans that the Nazis would turn out to be so horrible?

There were certainly very public signs before that. Hitler had _tried_ to seize power:

> The Beer Hall Putsch was a failed coup d'état by the Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler to seize power in Munich, Bavaria, which took place in November in 1923. 603 SA [Sturmabteilung - Storm Detachment, the Nazi's original paramilitary unit] surrounded the beer hall. Hitler, surrounded by his associates, advanced through the crowded auditorium. Hitler fired a shot into the ceiling and jumped on a chair yelling: "The national revolution has broken out! The hall is filled with six hundred men. Nobody is allowed to leave." He went on to state that the Bavarian government was deposed and declared the formation of a new government.

> Following the initial failure of the putsch, approximately two thousand Nazis were marching to the Feldherrnhalle, when they were confronted by a police cordon, which resulted in the deaths of 16 Nazis and four police officers. Hitler, who was wounded during the clash, escaped immediate arrest; after two days, he was arrested and charged with treason.

> The putsch brought Hitler to the attention of the German nation and generated front-page headlines in newspapers around the world. Hitler was found guilty of treason and sentenced to five years in Landsberg Prison.[1]

Mein Kampf has had also been published by 1926, sections of which gave a rather stark insight into Hitler's thought process:

> At the beginning of the War, or even during the War, if twelve or fifteen thousand of these Jews who were corrupting the nation had been forced to submit to poison-gas, just as hundreds of thousands of our best German workers from every social stratum and from every trade and calling had to face it in the field, then the millions of sacrifices made at the front would not have been in vain. On the contrary: If twelve thousand of these malefactors had been eliminated in proper time probably the lives of a million decent men, who would be of value to Germany in the future, might have been saved.[2]

[1] Paraphrased from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Hall_Putsch

[2] James Murphy translation - http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200601.txt ; the original German can be found at "Hätte man zu Kriegsbeginn..." in this document: https://ia802801.us.archive.org/9/items/Hitler-Adolf-Mein-Ka...

Re: Last German kaiser's heirs fight for riches lost behind Iron Curtain

#69
post #32
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would have been obvious to anyone who actually read Mein Kampf.

Too bad it is essentially banned in Germany

It's sold on Amazon.de, at least in annotated form[1], and furthermore is quite trivial to find online - the Internet Archive has multiple versions[2].

[1] https://www.amazon.de/dp/3981405234

[2] https://ia800301.us.archive.org/3/items/Hitler-Adolf-Mein-Ka... / https://ia802801.us.archive.org/9/items/Hitler-Adolf-Mein-Ka...

Re: Last German kaiser's heirs fight for riches lost behind Iron Curtain

#70
post #65
post #24

Post-communist reparations is one big mess in central Europe. I think the case of Lichtenstein is one of the most stark: > Through the prince of Liechtenstein and his family, this country on the Alpine Rhine was still closely linked to the distant Czech lands in the first half of the 20th century, and after 1918 the prince and other family members had an influential role in Czechoslovakia as late-Medieval propertied…

> It is easy to brush these away as long past history, but for example these properties were confiscated from the hands of the current princes father. That I'd think as pretty close connection still. I'm having a problem coming up with a reason why we should care about the prince of Liechtenstein compared any other random person. Seriously during the period when they lost their lands whole families were totally wiped…

> I'm having a problem coming up with a reason why we should care about the prince of Liechtenstein compared any other random person

I see the situation in quite the opposite way; these high profile cases spearheading the effort to get the soviet/communist abuses acknowledged and establishing the principle of restitution that'll then help all those subjected to confiscations etc

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